Sex Dolls at Sea with Bo Ruberg

Sex Dolls at sea: Imagined Histories or sexual technologies addresses the cultural conversations around  in the current rise of sex tech – digital technologies used for sexual pleasure – by examining popular narratives about sex tech’s history. The book explores theories through the lens of the sex doll as the original sexual “technology” with a focus on the so-called dames do voyage, homemade sex dolls, supposedly cobbles together by sailors on long journeys in centuries gone by.

Dr. Bo Ruberg (they/them) is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine and the co-editor of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. They are the author of three monographs: Video Games Have Always Been Queer (NYU Press, 2019), The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (2020), and Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022). They are also the co-editor of Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023).

With opening remarks by Chelsea Russell, YorkU PhD student, and Sarah York-Bertram, organizer of the Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster, whose research is about sex work histories in Canada.

Register in advance:

https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpcuyhrD0uEtfHx5ELkVR0W6Tvi6C9kkQW